BIG NEWS: NIH Director to open XMRV conference!!!

Wow Shebacat - that is a shocking list of different infections. No wonder you are so ill. I really hope that XMRV research will deliver some solid answers and practical solutions for you.

Re. NIH Director F Collins opening the XMRV Conference - its incredible how these big players have been listed - almost downplayed - what an interesting insight into how scientists operate in the world and with each other. We've got so used to the media hyping celebrities in the wider world etc. Yet there he is - 'F Collins' in tiny little letters almost hidden at the top of the day's agenda! What??? This guy runs the NIH fellas!!!!!- where's the respect???! Give that man some BLOCK capitals, some BOLD typeface and the gold embossed lettering!!!!!!!!!!!!! Made me chuckle.

i think collins was JUST added on saturday, today. because i thought i looked at the program on friday and he was not there. i looked at it today, and saw that, what you called low-key addition, and thought, collins? f collins. holy crap, that is the HEAD of the NIH.
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I have a downloaded file from last wed and it is there. Didn't ring a bell with me.
Maybe someone has an earlier downloaded copy ? These things are so easy to miss with cfids-brain.

Of course, doesn't really matter when it was put on ( don't want to damper the excitement ) ... the important thing is that he will be there ! :victory:

If you ever wanted confirmation that XMRV/MLVs are being taken extremely seriously at the very highest level of medical science, then having Francis Collins open the 1st International Conference on XMRV is it.

I still feel a fear that this is going to turn out horribly: That Wessely will turn up with some astounding piece of new reaserch which convinces them not to bother with the PCRs as he's proven we're all demented.

I'm still staying cautious about all this but it will be pretty terrible if XMRV comes to nothing when we feel so close to a real breakthrough.

not to put a downer on things but how seriously can they be taking it if they dont start untill 1pm? or is only working half days normal for this sort of thing? I haven't been to many conferences but the ones I've been to started in the morning not the afternoon

it's progress but I'm not convinced that they are taking this seriously enough yet

not to put a downer on things but how seriously can they be taking it if they dont start untill 1pm? or is only working half days normal for this sort of thing? I haven't been to many conferences but the ones I've been to started in the morning not the afternoon

it's progress but I'm not convinced that they are taking this seriously enough yet

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It's Labour Day weekend so Monday is a holiday. Perhaps people would normally fly in on the evening before but in this case it would be cutting short the last long weekend of summer and rearranging plans long made. Because of the high numbers attending, perhaps they've had no choice but to allow Tuesday morning for travel. Just a thought.

It's Labour Day weekend so Monday is a holiday. Perhaps people would normally fly in on the evening before but in this case it would be cutting short the last long weekend of summer and rearranging plans long made. Because of the high numbers attending, perhaps they've had no choice but to allow Tuesday morning for travel. Just a thought.

"When the geneticist Francis Collins was named director of the National Institutes of Health, last summer, he became the public face of American science and the keeper of the world’s deepest biomedical-research-funding purse."

"A key duty of the N.I.H. director is to justify the agency’s budget and defend before Congress the programs it funds, a duty that requires a skill quite apart from prowess in the laboratory. In fifteen years at the National Human Genome Research Institute, Collins had proved himself an able manager, bringing the Genome Project to a successful conclusion in 2003—two and a half years early and four hundred million dollars under budget."

I'd just note, amidst all the excitement (and it is very exciting news) that all we can really conclude from this news is that it's likely that the blood supply study is now complete - or at least, that significant preliminary results are available. There's no particular reason I can see to conclude what those results are, since Collins would be likely to open the conference if he's presenting, whatever the results are. We'll just have to wait and see...not long to go now...but this is clearly set to be one humdinger of a conference!

collins is not listed as presenting at the conference. i only see him as opening the conference.

unfortunately, i now worry i have started a false rumor, because i emailed with a key person in the xmrv world and she had not heard of this development. so now i wonder if i got it wrong!!?? but i see his name on the program, still, "F. Collins"!!!!????